THE  AMEEIOAE" 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY 
MARCH,  igij 
BIOLOGICAL  STANDARDIZATION  OF  THE  DIGITALIS 
BODIES  BY  THE  CAT  METHOD  OF  HATCHER. 
By  Cary  Eggleston 
From  the  Department  of  Pharmacology,  Cornell  University  Medical  College, 
New  York  City. 
Since  the  publication  of  this  method  by  Hatcher  and  Brody  1  a 
number  of  observers  have  subjected  it  to  more  or  less  unfavorable 
criticism  and  it  is  the  purpose  of  the  present  communication  to 
discuss  these  criticisms  and  to  subject  the  method  to  an  even  more 
rigorous  scrutiny,  comparing  it  with  some  of  the  other  and  more 
widely  used  methods,  in  order  to  determine  which  of  them  is  the 
most  serviceable.  Much  of  the  material  is  drawn  from  reports 
found  in  the  literature,  or  from  the  laboratory  records  of  several 
who  have  carried  out  many  series  of  standardizations  on  cats,  and 
the  rest  from  the  personal  experiences  of  the  author. 
Before  passing  to  an  analysis  it  seems  advisable  to  outline  the 
important  factors  which  must  be  considered  of  value  in  any  method. 
These  desiderata  are : 
1.  The  method  should  be  reasonably  accurate  and  give  fairly 
concordant  results  on  repeated  tests  of  the  same  preparation. 
2.  Results  obtained  with  the  same  preparation  tested  at  long 
intervals  of  time  should  be  strictly  comparable,  and  deteriorations, 
if  present,  should  be  detected. 
3.  It  should,  as  far  as  possible,  eliminate  adventitious  factors 
such  as  might  cause  variations  in  the  results,  e.g.,  absorption,  climatic 
effects,  seasonal  changes,  etc. 
4.  Range  of  applicability ;  it  should  be  equally  applicable  to  the 
1a.  j.  pharm.  ;  1910;  82;  p.  360. 
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